There are certain contradictions that have defined my experience with artificial intelligence at this particular moment. It is clear that we are witnessing the emergence of extremely powerful technologies that have the potential to change the economy and the way we think about the value of art, creativity, and human work itself. At the same time, I will never know how to utilize it in my daily work.
So I wanted to understand what I’m missing and get some tips on how to better incorporate AI into my current life. And Ethan Mollick is the perfect guide. He is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and has spent countless hours experimenting with various chatbots, sharing his insights in his newsletter One Useful Thing and in his new book Co-Intelligence: Living. Collaboration with AI”
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This conversation covers the basics, including which chatbot to choose and how to get the most useful results. But the conversation goes far beyond that, exploring the strange, fun, and slightly unsettling ways that AI responds to us, and how chatbots can be more effective if we think of them as relationships rather than tools. It also talks about what you can get. .
Mollick says it is useful to understand this moment as a moment of co-creation, and that we should all strive to understand what this technology means for us. Because you can’t just call a big AI company and get an answer. “When you talk to OpenAI and Anthropic, they have no hidden instruction manual,” he told me. “As writers, marketers, and educators, there’s no list of how to leverage this. They don’t even know what these systems do.”
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This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lynn. Fact checked by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, who is also mixed by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Lauryn Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience Strategy by Christina Samlewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
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